Cookies

This page contains information about what cookies are and how we use them on our website.

What are cookies?

A cookie is a small piece of text that can be stored on your computer, phone or whatever you use to surf the Internet by the websites you visit. Cookies have many uses, which may include storing information about you. You can find out more information about
cookies at aboutcookies.org.

What cookies do we use?

Managing your current visit

Name: ASP.NET_SessionId

Purpose: Stores the user's session ID to allow the site to recognise your movement around the site as being from one computer.

Data stored by cookie: Information about the user’s current session.

Duration of cookie: Expires at the end of the session (when you close your browser).

More information: Without this cookie, much of the website’s functionality would be impaired, such as searching and filtering results, navigation breadcrumbs, etc.

Managing your shortlist

Name: Shortlist

Purpose: Records the services the user has added to their shortlist.

Data stored by cookie: The IDs of the services in the shortlist.

Duration of cookie: 1 year.

More information: Without this cookie the user would not be able to add services to their shortlist or have them be persisted there between visits to the site.

Logging in to the Administrative area

Name: sqlAuthCookie

Purpose: Records that the user has successfully logged into their Locate account.

Data stored by cookie: An encrypted authentication key.

Duration of cookie: Expires at the end of the session (when you close your browser).

More information: Without this cookie the user would not be able to log in to the website.

In addition, as a third party (e.g. service provider) or Local Authority user of Locate, when you log into your account, Locate will use cookies to remember various configurations you make throughout the administrative area. These are not recorded by the
server.

Logging in to the public area of the Locate

Name: sqlAuthCookie

Purpose: Records that the user has successfully logged into their Locate account.

Data stored by cookie: An encrypted authentication key.

Duration of cookie: Expires at the end of the session (when you close your browser).

More information: Without this cookie the user would not be able to log in to the website.

Remembering your search options

Name: mp-search-… (e.g. mp-search-serviceType)

Purpose: Records the user’s advanced search options so that they can be recalled when refining the search or navigating back to the homepage.

Data stored by cookie: the search field (encoded in the name of the cookie) and the value chosen.

Duration of cookie: Expires at the end of the session (when you close your browser).

More information: Without this cookie the user’s advanced search options would not be remembered between page views.

Text size accessibility widget

Name: TEXT-SIZE

Purpose: Records the user’s preference of text size so that it is persisted between pages and visits to the site.

Data stored by cookie: small, medium or large.

Duration of cookie: Permanent.

More information: Without this cookie the text size will reset with every page visited.

Social media sharing buttons

Purpose: Ensures the user sees the updated count if they share a page and return to it before the button’s share count cache is updated on the server.

Data stored by cookie: Information on the share buttons the user has clicked.

Duration of cookie: up to 2 years

More information: These cookies are part of a third-party social media widget used by Locate, produced by a company called AddThis. No data from these cookies are sent back to AddThis and disabling cookies would cause unexpected behaviour for users.

CQC Widget

Purpose: The “ki_...” cookies are used by CQC via a third party company called Qualaroo to occasionally offer in-page surveys. See the Google Analytics entry for more details on their purpose, data and duration.

Data stored by cookie: The Qualaroo cookies store whether you have been shown a survey already.

Duration of cookie: The Qualaroo cookies last 5 years

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the program we use to collect statistics from our website to show us how visitors use our site. We use the information to create reports and to help us to constantly improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form,
information like the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and which pages they visited, but we don't get personal information, and can't track who you are. Google Analytics creates four cookies:

_utma (lasts for two years)
_utmb (lasts for 30 minutes)
_utmc (lasts until you close your browser)
_utmz (lasts for six months)
There is more information available about Google Analytics cookies, and Google offer a Google 'opt-out' plugin if you don't want their cookies to be used on your browser.

YouTube

We use YouTube to run our videos, and then add them to our site in 'privacy-enhanced mode'. If you play the video, it will add a cookie to your computer. YouTube provides more information about privacy on its website.